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The Outing of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto Is Important Journalism

Update (10 p.m.): I’ve edited the title of this post. The person outed in the Newsweek article tells the AP that he is not Bitcoin’s creator, while a long-dormant social account for Satoshi Nakamoto came alive for the first time in 4 years this evening to say, “I am not Dorian Nakamoto.”

In Newsweek, finance editor Leah McGrath Goodman claims to have outed the mysterious creator of the digital currency Bitcoin. The Japanese-American man lives in California and incredibly, is actually named Satoshi Nakamoto. Though the man, who now goes by Dorian S. Nakamoto, would be a multi-millionaire given Bitcoin’s current value of $645.50 and his estimated possession of 1.5 million of the coins, Goodman reports that he lives a humble life in Los Angeles’s San Bernardino foothills. She’s likely right in her speculation that he hasn’t cashed in because doing so would have outed him, as he would have had to reveal his identity in some way to the Bitcoin to USD intermediary he used. Many in the Bitcoin community have reacted with disbelief and outrage at the “doxxing” of the reclusive creator arguing that the exposure is a massive invasion of privacy. But if true, the article is just an act of great investigative reporting.

Nakamoto himself didn’t want to discuss Bitcoin with Goodman, calling police when she came to his home, but he did seem to admit to being the creator by not denying it and making statements like this: “I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It’s been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.”

Those in the Bitcoin community were upset that Goodman included Dorian’s real name, a photo of him, and a photo of his home. Their argument is multifold: that his request to remain pseudo-anonymous should be respected, that his safety is imperiled by outing him as a multimillionaire, and that the level of detail in the story is unnecessary. “You really should take off the picture of his house… what are you, insane?” writes one commenter on the story. “Its sort of a shame that this article went out of their way to prove the identity of a man who clearly didn’t want to be revealed,” writes another. “Article writer comes off as a Ruthless type.”

On the wealth exposure, TechDirt’s Mike Masnick asks, “Question: for those freaking out about Newsweek ‘revealing’ Nakamoto, are you similarly incensed when paper reports on big lottery winners?”

“I’m disappointed Newsweek decided to dox the Nakamoto family, and regret talking to Leah,” tweeted Gavin Andresen, a Bitcoin developer who took the reins of the project after Nakamoto pulled out in 2011. Goodman reports that Satoshi’s absence from the Bitcoin project in the last few years coincides with 64-year-old Dorian’s health issues since that time, including prostate cancer and a stroke.

@EntropyExtropy Good question. Pictures and info people are asking about (including residence and car) already public. His name too.#Bitcoin

The journalist herself is taking questions on Twitter and says she needed to include the details she did to “offer a sense of his humanity.” Leah McGrath Goodman argues that including a photo of his car and residence was not an invasion of privacy because those things “are already public.” This of course is a cue for a discussion about the difference between privacy and obscurity, but yes, she’s right, once he was outed, it provided the pieces needed to track down where he lived. It wasn’t a necessity to include a photo of his home and car in the story beyond proving the humility of his lifestyle, but it also wasn’t very private. I was able to get his address and pull up a photo of his home on GoogleGoogle Street View in less than 10 minutes; and yes, the Google Street View photo of his home includes his car. As for details Goodman did not include, she says that ”did not publish his current email, which is private;” she obtained it “through a company he buys model trains from.”

Google Street View has an even better photo of Nakamoto’s home. Once his identity was clearly established, this was no longer private information.

“This was a dick move to Satoshi who didn’t desire this in any way,” says security expert Mikko Hypponen. “It’s a big scoop, but a shitty thing to publish all this information.”

Other journalists have tried to out Satoshi Nakamoto in recent years, most famously Joshua Davis in the New Yorker, but have been unsuccessful. Their reports consisted of vague finger pointing and speculation. Goodman’s report is a thorough and convincing one. She did public record digging to find him. According to Forbes researcher Sue Radlauer, Dorian Nakamoto is one of three Satoshi Nakamotos living in the U.S.; another one passed away in Hawaii in 2008 and two others live in Japan. As Mathew Ingram notes, “It’s interesting how everyone chose to believe the secretive hacker mastermind pseudonym thing [when it came to Bitcoin creator's identity]. The truth is boring.”

It may be boring but it’s impressive that Goodman apparently succeeded where others have failed. While Dorian S. Nakamoto refused to talk at length with her, she did interview many people in his life, including his brothers, children, ex-wife, and former colleagues, all of whom found the idea that he is Bitcoin’s creator compelling given his libertarian views, background as a computer engineer and work on classified military projects. They also claim his writing style matches that of Nakamoto.

Is it fair to say that it’s an invasion of privacy to prove that a man who identified himself as Satoshi Nakamoto when he created Bitcoin is in fact a man named Satoshi Nakamoto? He created something that has become a global phenomenon, caused governments to wring their hands, and taken on immense real-world value, with a billions-dollar market cap. The need to know the creator, who himself holds much of the currency, was important. This is not tabloid journalism; this is very much in the public interest, and important for those adopting and investing in the Bitcoin system to know.

Mike Hearn, a Google engineer who became a Bitcoin developer in recent years was more sanguine about the outing. “I don’t know if it changes things that much,” says Hearn by email. “I guess he won’t rejoin development or anything. I’m not even sure if he still watches. I’d like to think he does and he is satisfied with how things have turned out.”

Nakamoto may have wanted to distance himself from the project by using his middle name in its authorship but there was some pride and desire to be associated with it in not taking on a true pseudonym. It must have gotten bigger than he ever expected, and with the arrest and prosecutions of other currency creators, he may have feared the financial Frankenstein cooked up in his computer laboratory. Now that his thin veil of anonymity has been stripped away, will he be free to cash in? In that way, she may have done him a favor.

It’s a journalist’s job to invade privacy, and to report things that people often don’t want reported, to tell stories people don’t want told. Respectable journalists try to do this in a way that doesn’t cause unnecessary harm, or unwarranted intrusion into people’s personal lives. The Bitcoin story is too big and too important not to be fully investigated and told. When Nakamoto sent his project out into the world in 2008, under his real name no less, it was inevitable that he would one day be unmasked.

It’s certainly ironic. Just as Bitcoin is less anonymous than people think — it’s a huge traceable public ledger after all — so is its creator.

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I think there’s no question that the investigative journalism here is, indeed, brilliant (or at least inspiring). However, I don’t know if I can go along with the suggestion that the outing is brilliant journalism. Yes, a lot of the information was already public – you just had to know where to look. Eventually, this probably would probably have come out anyway. But we’re not talking about the hypothetical ‘eventually’ – we’re talking about now, and this story. Would it have been a lesser story if those ‘public’ details were left for the reader to dig up rather than effectively handed on a silver platter? Would it have been a lesser story if the name that the person is using was left out, and only non-private information were used as proof that they had found Satoshi Nakamoto were published? Your article’s conclusion that “The Bitcoin story is too big and too important not to be fully investigated and told.” seems to imply that releasing the details such as name, age, address (indirectly, but certainly made blatantly easy to find), family member details, etc. is something that -had- to be done. But then I wonder why it should stop there? Why shouldn’t we be told whether he votes democrat or republican? Why aren’t we being told what his religious affiliation is? It could be of vital importance to ‘The Bitcoin story’ what this person’s sexual orientation is. Or is it? And it the conclusion is that it isn’t, then take a few steps back and wonder again whether all that other ‘public’-made-frontpage-public information was really necessary for this part of ‘The Bitcoin story’ to be told.

I think her initially emailing him under the pretext of talking about trains was, as my colleague Andy Greenberg termed it on Twitter, “ruthless.” But the rest of her reporting and writing is what one would expect — and hope for — with this kind of story. Were she to simply say, “I met the real Satoshi Nakamoto and he lives in California,” I think most readers would be doubtful. His family members agreed to speak with her, and apparently agreed to do so under their real names and identities. She had to provide certain details about his life to prove the case and affirm that he is in fact Bitcoin’s creator. Beyond that, the fact that he used his real name as his “pseudonymous identity” goes far to undermine the idea that he expected to remain unknown forever.

I’m not sure you fully understand what it is that I’m saying. I certainly don’t think that this person expected to remain unknown forever – I even state quite the opposite. However, there is a difference in being provably found, and in having one’s details put onto front pages.

Consider your statement that “She had to provide certain details about his life to prove the case and affirm that he in fact Bitcoin’s creator”. What bits of the information actually prove that he is Bitcoin’s creator? Does his address prove that he is Bitcoin’s creator? If so – how? After all, nobody knows Satoshi Nakamoto’s address, so how would one actually verify that the address that was found by the journalist matches it? The only part that stands as flimsy truth is this person’s response, which certainly seems like it fits within the context of Bitcoin. All the other details are fluff that do nothing to prove that this person is Satoshi Nakamoto – only that this person is, well, this person. It’s an invitation to media to go to that address and find the person described/photographed there.

What she should have provided was incontrovertible proof that this person is Satoshi Nakamoto – something that could hypothetically have been done had this person been a willing interviewee, e.g. through e-mail records, signing of a message with the known keys, a Bitcoin transfer out of an address known or generally suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto’s, etc. – or let it be. Instead what she has presented as ‘proof’ is only proof that ‘This man, whoever he is, lives at this house’ and presented it as journalism. In your words, what we should have gotten was “I met the real Satoshi Nakamoto, he lives in California, here is a statement signed with his key.”

Technology and privacy have truly collided here, and both are worse for the wear; proper investigative (technological) journalism and privacy concerns have been put aside for headlines.

The article is an interesting read and the research done absolutely stellar – and while the pretexting may be ruthless, I fully understand that journalists have to be ruthless to get to the bottom of things. Dredging that bottom and dumping it all out on top, on the other hand, I feel is questionable at best.

Of course she doesn’t understand what you’re saying. She is no different than Leah. These people lack fundamental understanding of right and wrong. Its part of the job requirement apparently. I love that its okay to post a picture of the guys house, and then to REPOST it here on this article, arrogantly declaring “Its no longer private information” (<—- WTF?) but she finds it kinda iffy how Leah got his email address. Wow. So the email thing was kinda iffy for you, but the "Sitting on his porch for an hour despite repeated pleas that she leave them alone" until he had to call the police … then posting his home address, and likely the location where 400 million dollars worth of Bitcoin keys are stored … that was a-okay! What is wrong with you people?

Just because all of the information she found was technically already public doesn’t mean it’s okay to publish it like that. We’re not talking about legalities or rights here; we’re talking about simple human ethics. There is absolutely no reason for her to invade his privacy like that except to get the “big scoop.” Worst of all, though, is that she could have written pretty much the same article WITHOUT those details. She’s a disgusting image of what the public hates most about journalists, equivalent to celebrity paparazzi.

Totally agree. Just because you can “out” someone doesn’t mean you should! Good journalist such as Bob Woodward definitely know the difference. Other than her self promotion and ensuring this unhealthy man is relentlessly harassed, what did Goodman accomplish? This would only be considered “brilliant journalism” for the National Inquirer. I expect better from Forbes.

The only “good” thing to come of it has been the number of “journalists” – including this one – outing themselves. There is a certain value in knowing that Kashmir Hill thinks this tabloid tripe is “brilliant journalism”.

I don’t see that there’s inarguably “no public interest” in “outing” this guy, depending on what “outing” means. “This guy” spearheaded Bitcoin’s creation; Bitcoin has become a significant, even if not major, element in today’s financial landscape, especially for its promise, as perceived by many. Many people have millions put into Bitcoins. Information regarding the founder’s intentions and possible related actions are inherently of consequence to the “public interest.” Part of understanding requires “outing” him, if the definition of outing is understanding his identity. However, I agree that there is no public interest in identifying his license plate or other information that SO easily enables physically locating him, so if that is your definition of “outing” then I could agree.